You couldn't make it up!

So there I was, sitting in Le Pain Quotidien, my favourite restaurant in the concourse at St Pancras International railway station.  I was with my best friend, Gwyneth, having a late lunch and anticipating the Romantic Novelists’ Association winter party in Westminster.  We’d already had a bit of a drama since one of my train tickets was missing and I’d had to fork out £50 to buy another one. “Let it go,” I told myself, “it’s done and that’s that.”

Out on the concourse, waving to us, were three more writers who had arrived on a later train.  They came in and joined us.

            “Something very strange has just happened,” Audrey said.  “They’ve just put out a call for an Elizabeth Ringrose at the Eurostar desk.”

            For those not familiar with Eurostar it is the high speed train which now connects the UK with mainland Europe, via the Channel Tunnel.

What a bizarre coincidence, I thought.

Next to me was Margaret whose phone was ringing.  “No,” I heard her say to her daughter on the phone, “I’ve got my bag and my purse …”  She went out onto the concourse for the rest of the call.

It was time for us to pay the bill and turning to the bag containing my party dress I realised I’d left my handbag in the station toilets. Barging past the waiter with the bill, yelling that I’d lost my bag and with Gwyneth on my heels, I ran down to the toilets, past Margaret who was still looking utterly puzzled and talking on the phone.

The attendant in the loos said she hadn’t found a bag but asked me my name and mumbled about Eurostar. OMG, I thought, the tannoy announcement … 

            After babbling incoherently to two Eurostar staff members I was called through to their security department.  Three girls had found my bag in the toilets and had handed it in.  My knees went to mush with relief as a lady carried the bag towards me.  “See if everything is there,” she said, which actually hadn’t occurred to me, but yes, there was the folding money, my iPhone, cards, train tickets, car/house keys and asthma inhaler.  After more babbling and grateful thanks I went with Gwyneth back to the restaurant.

            “I’ll pay the bill now,” I said to our young, handsome waiter.

            “My heart stopped for you,” he said.

            I imagine he stops plenty of hearts himself.  

            Gwyneth paid the bill.  I was still a gibbering wreck.

            So what was the purpose of Margaret’s puzzling phone call? It seems the Eurostar staff had looked at the recent contacts on my iPhone and as I give Margaret a lift each week they dialled her home number. Her poor husband was told his wife had lost her handbag and with that the call ended. He telephoned their daughter in Surrey who then telephoned Margaret insisting she’d lost her bag.

            Meanwhile Eurostar had telephoned my husband.  Well of course it came as no surprise to him to hear that my bag had been left in a toilet.  He rang St Pancras service desk and the very kind man put out the tannoy announcement that my friends had heard.

            Still wondering why the bag had been taken to the Eurostar desk I realised, with horror, that my bag must have come under the category of “suspicious unaccompanied baggage” and as the Eurostar section of the station is a UK border they would have the facility for scanning.

            I guess I’ll never know who the honest and kindly girls were who handed it in for me and I bitterly regret the inconvenience and worry suffered by Margaret, her husband and daughter, my friend Gwyneth and my poor husband.  But the girls’ honesty and the sheer loveliness of everyone concerned gave me a glow, and I realised that even in the context of crowds, travel schedules, queues and tiredness there are still angels of kindness who come to rescue us.